Commoning in the Italian and French cultural milieux
1 : Centre d'Economie Paris Nord (CEPN)
Université Paris 13-CEPN-CNRS-UMR 7234
Ostrom and Hess (2007) have highlighted the specific complexities of knowledge commons (KC), as well as the context of “intellectual land grab” as “a direct outcome of new technologies and global markets” in which they unfold. KC are not considered to be limited to the artefacts, or the storage facilities, but also taken into consideration as productive facilities. The granted productive dimension of KC provides proper grounds to connect their governance specificities to collective cooperation and labour issues, integrated in the notion of "commoning". According to Peter Linebaugh (2009), commoning should be understood as "a network of actions and relationships that lead to shared self-governance of commons between a diverse and multi-faceted set of actors with different socio-economic and demographic backgrounds, capacities, and interests". The recent academic developments on both commoning and knowledge commons enables the latter to be interpreted as spaces of social negotiation and collective practices (Fournier 2013; Mattei, 2014).
Departing from the notion of social capital, cultural commons call for the integration of social network analysis and the evolution of the concept of “social district” elaborated by Santagata (2006) as “localized system of production involving goods and services whose value resides in aesthetic and semiotic pleasure they convey”. Cultural commons are thus progressively elaborated through a broaden perspective of cultural production and evolution, potentially connected to the notion of “common good”. Renewed framework of analysis designed by Madison, Frischmann and Strandburg(2010), has been crucial to identify “constructed cultural commons”. Bertacchini, et al. (2012) underline how “studying cultures as shared resources is useful in eliciting the main factors and social dilemmas affecting the production and evolution of cultural expression”. Thus, the organisational specificities of cultural commons call for a better understanding of the “commoning” patterns aiming to develop new models of self-managed cultural institutions dealing with civic participation, inclusive processes, professional exchanges, peer-support and networking. « Commoning » refers to “social practices that consist of actions which cannot be limited to production, reproduction or usage (or any combination of two of them)” (Euler, 2018). It integrates new forms of cooperation, care and productive relations, built on individual expression and commitment, along with egalitarian and potentially emancipating democratic governance.
In that context, the self-managed organisational models of artist-run spaces are attempts to address the necessity to coordinate socio-economic alternatives for artists, especially in their early career.The collaborative arrangements to self-organise and control how artists produce, distribute, are evaluated and sold internationally carries intricately ambiguous relation to the “artworld”, including dependency and reciprocal bonds.
The aim of this paper would be to question the role of commoning and self-management governance patterns and their impact on the professional path of the artistic metier. Drawing from the experiences of two artistic millieux in Paris and Naples we will array independent practices at stake in the development on individual and collective professional path in the cultural sector that come about from bottom up practices.
| Subject : | : | IIPPE Paper |
| Language of text | : | English |
| Topics | : | IIPPE Working Group - Social Capital |
| Keywords | : | commoning ; cultural milieux ; governance ; knowledge commons |
| PDF version | : |  PDF version |
